Title: Modelling the barriers of Indian pharmaceutical supply chain using fuzzy AHP

Authors: Vinayak Vishwakarma; Chandra Prakash Garg; Mukesh Kumar Barua

Addresses: Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India ' Department of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, India

Abstract: Due to the profound discrepancy in the developing country's production, which possibly affects the quality of producing medicine, harms patient's health. The pharmaceutical supply chain has been challenged by the barriers especially in the context of developing nations like India. The identification of barriers is desired to enhance the performance of the industry. This study identifies 28 barriers under six major criteria of Indian PSC through relevant literature and expert's opinions. This paper proposes a hybrid model based on fuzzy AHP to prioritised rank barriers in PSC. This approach is best for analysing experts' judgments and uncertainty involved in the process of prioritisation. The findings and framework developed could be used by the drug industry, which helps them to destroy barriers to addressing sustainability and quality manufacturing. The results indicate that market-related barriers are the most important for Indian PSC. Further sensitivity analysis is performed to test the robustness of the proposed approach.

Keywords: pharmaceutical supply chain; PSC; barriers; fuzzy-AHP; sensitivity analysis; India.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2019.097578

International Journal of Operational Research, 2019 Vol.34 No.2, pp.240 - 268

Received: 30 Nov 2015
Accepted: 31 Jan 2016
Published online: 30 Jan 2019 *

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